Can Originality Save Hollywood?

With sequels, remakes, and adaptations taking over theaters this summer, studios are seeing a surprising trend. Instead of moviegoers rushing to see the old and familiar, they've been avoiding the box office, sending ticket sales on a downward slump that resulted in the lowest Memorial Day movie attendance since 1993, according to The New York Times.

The numbers have reportedly sent some studio execs scrambling to find unique projects to package and push into production, seemingly abandoning their recent strategy of "remake, rewrite, and reuse." Deadline, for one, says that the major players -- including 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. -- have arranged meetings with top Hollywood agencies like WME, UTA, ICM, and CAA, over the next month or so in an effort to scope out new ideas. While the results wouldn't be immediate, they'd make all the different between the summer of 2011 being a bust or a boon for execs -- and they could help others in the movie industry as well.

As an unnamed producer told Deadline, "this sluggish summer might be a blessing in disguise for talent and producers who want to take risks but have been hamstrung for the past two years by studios that have been operating in retreat mode, and looking for the safest bets possible. The lack of originality this summer might get off this safe track and in the mindset to take some risks again, and that would be a good thing."

But just how sluggish is this summer? While the Memorial Day numbers were anything but awe-inspiring, it is still early June with many big titles not hitting the box office until late June or July. Toy Story 3, which has been winning the hearts of critics in early screenings, is poised to lure in audiences both young and old in a week, while big-budget productions like M. Night Shymalan's The Last Airbender and Christopher Nolan's Inception are chomping at the bit for their July release dates. Those buzz-worthy films alone could turn around a lackluster summer box office -- and that's not even taking into consideration films with built-in audiences like The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Predators, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

While summer 2010 might be lacking the break-out hit that so many are used to and critics like to see, there's still plenty of time for the box office to bounce back with the introduction of a few tentpole franchises. After all, overall sales are only down to $1.02 billion versus last year's $1.09 billion, a gap that can easily be overtaken with the right mixture of action and comedy.

Of course, we won't argue with studios moving away from endless sequels, remakes (The A-Team and Karate Kid), and soulless adaptations (Prince of Persia) in favor of finding new, fun material -- or at least exercising more judgment in what franchises they pursue. But it might take a little bit longer and a little bit more than one slumping summer for the tide to turn completely.